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Garde sets you up with two count sheets out of the box — one for Food and one for Beverage (beer, wine, liquor). These automatically populate with products that fall under the respective category whenever you purchase new vendor items. Need a refresher on how vendor items become products? See: Vendor Items and Products. But what about paper goods? Cleaning supplies? Other consumables? Some operators want to track these items too, and for good reason.
Why bother tracking paper goods? Paper goods, cleaning supplies, and other consumables are part of your non-food cost of goods sold (COGS). They show up on your P&L and can quietly eat into margins if nobody’s watching. Tracking them in inventory gives you the data you need to spot waste, negotiate better pricing, and keep your non-food COGS in check.

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How Garde handles non-food products

Garde doesn’t treat all vendor items the same way. Food and Beverage items get matched to a product, and Garde works hard to avoid creating duplicates. That means you can use the same product in a recipe or on your inventory without worrying about it changing if you order from a new vendor or in different packaging. For other purchases — expenses, cleaning supplies, paper goods — each vendor item gets its own unique product every time a new item is uploaded. Garde doesn’t try to match these to an existing product. So if you keep ordering the same item from the same vendor, everything stays tidy. But if you switch vendors or order a new version, your box of straws will get a brand new product name. Also worth knowing: purchases in “other expenses” categories won’t automatically appear on a count sheet.

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So how do I inventory these items?

You can absolutely include them. Just pick the products you want and add them to a count sheet manually. The mechanics are the same as food and beverage — just keep these differences in mind:
  • The price only updates if the vendor item stays the same.
  • You won’t get a notification if the vendor item changes and the product no longer reflects the current price.
  • New products in “other expenses” categories won’t auto-populate on any count sheet.
For instructions on adding products to count sheets, see: How do I Set Up my Inventory Count Sheets?.

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Can I keep vendor items attached to the right products?

Yes. If you know you’ve ordered a new vendor item but want it linked to an existing product on your inventory, you can do that manually. This article walks through the steps: How to Fix a Vendor Item Associated with the Wrong Product